I know this book has had a wide range of love and criticism. I have purposefully not followed all of that because I wanted to read the book with out that baggage. I’m glad I did, I enjoyed the book very much.

I went into the story thinking it was about detention of illegal immigrants and the holding of illegal immigrants in the USA. So I was surprised to learn it wasn’t about that at all. Instead it’s about the trial and peril Mexican and other Central American migrants put themselves through in an effort to get away from certain death in their home countries.

Following the mass murder of her entire family, Lydia escapes Acapulco with her son Luca. She knows she is being hunted by Javier, someone she thought was her friend but who has killed her family and now wants to kill her.

On their journey to cross into the USA Lydia and Luca endure ordeals that are unimaginable to most of us. They are traveling with other undocumented immigrants- a wide representation of the human beings who need to escape certain death, rape and torture. Not all of them will make it across the border.

This book is brutal and told with depth and despair. I enjoyed the writing and the story.

*****Five stars for American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.

Read last week’s review of No One Will Tell You This But Me

My current read Middlemarch by George Eliot